


the house always wins

by puckity



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: 17-year-old Peter, Canon Compliant, Consensual, Currently Unconsummated, Daddy Kink, Dirty Talk, Humor, Jealousy, Light Angst, M/M, Mentions of PTSD and Mental Health Struggles, Mutual Pining, Non-Explicit References to Encounters with Other Partners, Possessive Tony Stark, Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Requited Unrequited Love, Sex Work, Sexting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-03 19:42:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17290190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puckity/pseuds/puckity
Summary: He needed to look mature for his age—like he was an adult.Which I am,Peter reminded himself.Legally. In the state of New York.That was what had started this whole thing anyway.[A series of poor decisions featuring: a virginity auction, Tony becoming increasingly jealous of his own online persona, and two ostensible superheroes absolutely playing themselves.]





	the house always wins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ConsultingUnderGroundRainbow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConsultingUnderGroundRainbow/gifts).



> Written for [ConsultingUnderGroundRainbow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConsultingUnderGroundRainbow) over at the [**2018 Starker Exchange**](https://starkerexchange.dreamwidth.org/)! I went with the prompt of "Peter trying to make Tony jealous" and mixed in some "friends to lovers, insecurity, and pining" for good measure—hopefully it hit the mark!
> 
> This was supposed to be a short, ridiculous thing but—like most of my stories—it got massively out of hand. That said, there will definitely be a smutty sequel at some point...ideally before IW2 drops and murders us all.
> 
> And for the purposes of this piece, I fudged Peter's age a bit and pushed up his birthday from August to January.
> 
> _**NOTE:** Peter is 17 years old and of age in both the setting of the story and the location in which it was written. The sex work/solicitation here is instigated and consented to by Peter and currently unconsummated._
> 
> Beta'd by the long-suffering [Rachel](http://betterwithsparkles.tumblr.com/).
> 
> You can also follow me on [Dreamwidth](https://puckity.dreamwidth.org/), if you'd like!

“You know that you’re my best friend and I’ll, like, always support you.” Ned sat on the edge of Peter’s bed, twisting the panels of a faded Rubix cube without looking at it. “But I gotta say, I think this is a mistake.”

Peter nodded along like he’d heard every word, like it hadn’t gone in one ear as a garble of syllables and tumbled right out the other. He was staring at himself in the warped, full-length mirror that May had stuck to his wall with picture frame hanging strips and he reinforced from time to time with little shots of webbing. He smoothed down the wrinkles in his shirt—his best dress one, the one that he’d gotten for the MIT summer program interviews that Stark Industries had set up for him—and straightened the collar. He tucked the tail into his pants, then pulled it out again. Undid two buttons down the chest, then rebuttoned the lowest one.

He needed to look sexy, but not _too_ sexy. Not off-puttingly, weirdly sexy. Not like some kid in his uncle’s oversized blazer and black skinny jeans that he’d bought even though the department store clerk had given him a pretty harsh side-eye for it.

He needed to look mature for his age—like he was an adult. _Which I am,_ Peter reminded himself. _Legally. In the state of New York._

That was what had started this whole thing anyway.

His 17th birthday had come and gone with about as much fanfare as his 16th or his 15th—which he guessed was not really all that much for most 17 year olds. But then again he was a senior at a school that still hosted science sleepovers, and they were kind of a big thing, so he was probably in the same boat as the majority of his classmates.

May took him out for his favorite (jerk chicken tacos at the little hole in the wall a few blocks over) and had the staff bring out an oblong cake when he went to the bathroom. She didn’t make them sing to him, although she did threaten it about six times before they finally got the check. They took the tourist way home—wandering through the park for as long as they could before the January cold started to snap under their jackets—and when they got back to the apartment she handed him a little red bag with blue tissue paper sticking up out of it.

Inside was a box, black and unwrapped, and Peter opened and shut it in one move. He shook his head and tried to hand it back to her.

She smiled soft at him from behind her kitschy frames. “He’d want you to have it, Peter. He would.”

“Aunt May, I can’t.” He swallowed thick, dropped the box back into the bag and held it out to her.

“Yes, you can.” She crossed her arms loose across her chest. “And besides—it’s just rude to reject a present right to someone’s face. Did I raise you to be rude like that?”

Peter pulled the bag back and sighed. “No.”

“That’s right, I didn’t. And neither did he.” She blinked fast and Peter thought that even without the super senses he’d still be able to catch the bright sheen of tears in her eyes. “He wouldn’t like it—you out there every night chasing down criminals and swinging from building to building—just like I don’t like it. But your uncle would’ve been proud of you.”

Peter stared down at the box, open again, and the re-shined glint of his Uncle Ben’s watch.

_Never go anywhere without a watch, Pete. Time’s the one thing you should always know._

“I’m proud of you.” May whispered it and gathered him up into a hug, the kind that she told him he’d never outgrow.

He didn’t shrug out of it.

It’d been later than night—or maybe the next day—as Peter sat at his desk rubbing his thumbs along the gold band links and playing with the clasp, that he made a decision.

A week or so later, he set up an account. He made the preliminary post first and texted Ned second, just to be sure that he didn’t give himself the chance to be talked out of it.

\---

If somebody asked him (which they probably would, given half the chance) Tony wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint the exact moment when it started. He wouldn’t even really have been able to ballpark it, because he didn’t catch on until it’d been blaring like blackout sirens and he had to assume that it’d started off a lot quieter than that.

So no, he didn’t know when and thank you for hypothetically asking, but at some point his latest life mantra had become: _But it doesn’t_ mean _anything._

Sure, he’d spent the better part of six months following the shaky-cam adventures of the ( _young_ , from what he could tell, like bedtime-instead-of-curfew young) kid-spider hybrid who’d been hanging from rooftops and politely chasing down muggers in Queens. And yeah, that meant combing through hour after tedious hour of cellphone video uploads and freeze-framing them whenever there was a particularly clear and up-close body shot—so that he could analyze the suit, obviously, and figure out if he could trace it back to its wearer. Then, yes, that’d also meant pulling select school records and cross-checking absences and hospital visits and calling around to some of his scattered borough contacts until he felt confident enough to pay a house call to one newly 15-year-old Peter Parker and his quirky, aren’t-you-too-young-to-have-a-teenager widowed aunt.

It was going to be a house call in his head, but then somehow it devolved into him poking out Parker’s loose ceiling tiles for that telltale sweatpants-bodysuit combo to use as leverage for the kid’s recruitment. Recruitment into what, the rhetorical audience asks? The world of official superheroes, of course, where backup is more than just an old can of mace and some hardware that’d clearly been soldered together in shop class.

If the kid was gonna do this, he ought to do it _safe_.

Not that Official Superhero Backup Duty in Leipzig had really gone as planned but at least Parker popped out the other side of it in one piece. Which was more than could be said for Rhodey—or Tony, for that matter. The kid had been dropped off back at his modest apartment building in time for school on Monday like it’d been a field trip, just a long weekend learning valuable interpersonal and team-building (team- _shattering_ ) skills.

Tony’d sent him the upgraded suit, then he’d stepped back. Let the kid have some breathing room—make some young mistakes before he got caught up in their ( _your_ , a voice like Jarvis-gone-sour hummed in his ear) older ones again. He was gonna keep an eye on Parker, make sure he didn’t Tarzan-swing his way into any major mob shakedowns or budding supervillain sleeper cells, but that was it.

Just watching out for Peter—like maybe, after everything, Tony might still be worth looking up to.

And yeah, that was narcissistic and emotionally shallow and every other clinical buzzword bulletpointed in his file; the one that the military shrink who Ross mandated psychiatric evals from kept full of lists like ingredients in some fluorescent food stuff of indeterminate origin. It was Tony and those big, orange, gummy circus peanuts tied for first place in the ‘Critically-Fucked-Up, Who-Even-Knows-What’s-Going-On-With-Them’ championship.

But what was he gonna do about that, other than pour himself two fingers of 1926 Macallan and pencil in 30 minutes of maudlin self-pity—45, if he had a cancellation in his schedule. He was a busy man (even if the Avengers were on a Ross-and-Rachel-esque break) and he just didn’t have daytime availability for wallowing.

Nights—spent cramped and skipping past his REM cycles on one of the less comfortable couches or manically tinkering in his labs with more breaking shit than building it—were another story. They’d been—not better, but _easier_ —when he’d had someone to share them with.

But that was another story too.

The point was: Tony had a lot of stuff going on and he logistically did not have the time to be weirdly up in Peter Parker’s life. He delegated that to Happy, assumed that it’d be mostly updates on science fair projects and field reports about helping little old people cross Astoria Boulevard. Assumed that if it was something major, he’d get a debriefing. Assumed that the last thing he needed was some radioactive teenager texting him indecipherable walls of emojis at 3AM.

But Peter wasn’t just _some_ radioactive teen—and Tony should’ve known better anyway. That was why he’d picked the kid.

Wasn’t it?

(File that under: Questions That Should Not Be Examined More Closely.)

After the whole debacle with Coney Island and Toomes—or maybe it was the solo run on the weapons warehouse and the Staten Island ferry sliced clean down the middle—Tony’d decided to get a little more hands-on. He’d always had monitors in the suits and in any of the civilian tech he gave Parker (just for the job, for keeping the kid in one piece so that May Parker didn’t hunt him down and disembowel him in his non-sleep) but now he started running scrubs on his electronic footprint to make sure it came back clean. No bugs, nobody trying to worm their way into the kid’s privacy (like Tony had a year or so ago) for nefarious purposes. He wasn’t _reading_ the stuff like a diary with a cracked-open lock; a few things slipped through, sure, but Tony wasn’t trying to _pry_.

It didn’t _mean_ anything, and as they started actually spending more time together—in Stark labs for internship supervisory sessions, out in the city on low-level training runs, and even exchanging texts every now and then (with a strict three-emoji limit)—Tony discovered that he didn’t even need to surveil all that much. The only way the kid could be more of an open book was if he turned in 24-hour CCTV footage of himself.

Tony still kept the monitors, still ran the programs, because the world would never be as good as Peter believed it to be and Tony wasn’t gonna let him find that out the hard way.

And if a bright little notification popped up whenever something new posted on one of the kid’s profiles and wouldn’t go away until Tony had opened the full window—well, that didn’t mean anything either.

So when his screen binged a little more than a week after Parker’s 17th birthday (just another thing to keep track of, same as the rest of it) in the middle of an increasingly unsuccessful merger meeting, he brought up the post on his phone right away. He read the title once, twice, and then again like maybe it wasn’t even written in an Earth language and that was why he couldn’t understand it:

_Sweet 17 Virginity Auction—Highest Bidder Gets to Pop This Boy Cherry!_

Tony didn’t read the rest of it, X’ed out before he did something stupid like slam his phone against the farthest wall or activate his new nanotech suit and fly out the window mid-negotiations to revoke all of Peter’s internet privileges until he turned 30.

\---

In the theoretical realm, when all of this had been a very mature and adult plan to help May out with the increasing financial burden of having a kid (soon-to-be) in college, it’d made sense. It’d been reasonable and manageable and totally doable—especially for someone who was basically a part-time Avenger already.

Staring at an inbox full of essay-length, _explicit_ responses to his ad? That was something else.

Not that it was going to stop Peter—of course it wasn’t gonna stop him. He was an adult and adults follow through on their plans. They do what needs to be done. Make their beds and lay in them.

The point was, they handle their shit and Peter was gonna handle his too. After all, it was his choice who got added to the private auction and he could always just not choose anyone. He wouldn’t get the money then, but it wasn’t like his virginity was a hostage situation.

_Have sex for the first time for money or we’ll pull the trigger! Don’t think we won’t do it!_

And even if it was—well, wasn’t that what all his pre-Avengers training was for?

Peter clicked through the messages like each one could be booby-trapped and deleted any that were nothing but badly-lit, grainy, up-close photos of dicks. That thinned the crowd by about half, give or take. Then he started actually reading the comments and decided that if he couldn’t make it the whole way through without cringing and closing his laptop, those ones would get deleted too. After the first few eliminations, he mocked up a tally sheet and began keeping score: how many words would a guy get in before his application got the big red X?

_i’m a super hot bro lookin to wreck some first-time boy pussy…_

_Strict Dad here to teach a misbehaving son a long, hard lesson. Calling me Father is not optional…_

_CAN’T WAIT TO TKAE U FROM BEHIND U’LL NEVER SEE IT CUMMING WANNA BE UR PEEPING TOM AND UR MY LITTLE INNOCENT SLEEPING BABY…_

_Maybe_ , Peter thought as he trashed his eleventh message in a row, _it won’t even be a choice_. Maybe they’d just all be too gross to deal with and he’d end up owing Ned $20 for being right about this whole shoddy plan.

A couple of them looked promising. Or at least, not so disgusting that they were immediately disqualified. Reasonable ( _or as reasonable as stuff like this gets_ , Peter figured) enough to be put in the tentative bidders’ pile.

Peter wondered how many bidders he’d need—how many to make sure the bids were competitive? He didn’t want his virginity going for fifty bucks, not if he could help it.

Some of them had photos attached too, but they were of hairy shirtless chests or bulges zipped-up behind jeans. Classy—for the most part—and Peter paid particular attention to the ones that looked like they were strong without being jacked, like maybe they were a little shorter than average and not quite as broad but still solid enough for Peter to nuzzle up against. If he was going to nuzzle—which he _wasn’t_ , because this was just a dumb sex thing. It wasn’t like he was gonna marry the winner or anything, but if the guy happened to have dark hair with a few gray patches and if his skin was more tan than pale and if he had sharp, bright eyes and maybe some well-groomed facial hair?

Well, Peter wasn’t gonna complain about that. And besides, nobody—especially not that one particular _body_ —needed to know.

“Why’s it only dudes who’re answering your ad?” Ned squinted at the screen, combing through Peter’s maybes for final approval. “Did you specifically say Dudes Only?”

“No.” Peter paused, cracked out his knuckles. “Maybe women don’t really like sex auctions?”

“Yeah, probably.” Ned skimmed over a message from someone who called himself The Headmaster; after a few seconds he scoffed and deleted the entry from the bidders’ file. “But I mean…you did use the word boy cherry—”

“You told me to use that! You said it sounded sexy!” Peter tossed his bunched-up sweatshirt at the back of Ned’s head.

Ned shook it off into a heap on the floor. “I said it sounded like a porno—which it does! You ran those keyword algorithms with me!”

Peter grumbled and waved him off noncommittally.

“Besides—” Ned continued, a little hazy around the edges. “You needed to be specific, since it’s not like you haven’t done _anything_ …”

Peter coughed, tried to swallow down the flush that burned up the back of his neck. A kiss or two with Liz—before her dad tried to drop Coney Island on top of him. And one or two more with MJ and a couple of the other academic decathloners at the post-tournament after parties, when someone would sneak in a case of hard lemonade and they’d play a few rounds of Ultimate Spin-The-Bottle (featuring revised rules and a rigorous score-keeping system). Some late Lego nights with Ned that fumbled into something more handsy than either of them had explicitly planned for. And of course his (daily—or more—if homework and friendly neighborhood crimefighting didn’t wring all the excess hormones out of him) jerk off sessions, awkward and exploratory and usually set to a soundtrack of Avengers news coverage playing in the background. He bookmarked the videos that followed Iron Man more than the others, especially if they cut to a lot of close-ups or caught any of what he said through the suit speakers.

It wasn’t expertise—but Ned was right. It wasn’t nothing either.

“Hey, what about this one?” Ned swiveled in the desk chair, grabbed Peter by the arm and yanked him towards the laptop. “It just came in…and it doesn’t sound _too_ bad.”

Peter scrolled through the short, crisp sentences:

_The first time should be memorable, and I’ll make sure that yours is unforgettable. I’ll take care of you in ways that you haven’t even thought of and you’ll be crying from pleasure by the end of the night. All you have to do is be a good boy for me. Can you do that? I’ll bet you can. I’ll bet you can be the best boy I’ve ever had—but we won’t know unless you give me a chance. So why don’t you give me that chance and show me just how much of a good boy you can be…_

He reread it twice, blinked slow and cleared his throat. The man used good grammar and proper punctuation and wrote in a firm, confident tone that made Peter want to stand up a little straighter just in case he was watching through the monitor. It reminded him of lab reports and official debriefs and professional claps on the shoulder that Peter preened at—even if they never lasted long enough. And the rest of it, the thick spread of _good boys_ that hit him like the hood of a car when he miscalculated a jump? He couldn’t say why they worked when all the _babys_ and _sons_ and _naughty boys_ didn’t but—well, they really, _really_ did.

There weren’t any attachments, dick pics or otherwise, so the rest of it was left to Peter’s hyper-compensating imagination.

“Good call.” He didn’t look at Ned, didn’t need to see the half-smirk settling in his best friend’s dimples to know it was there. “I mean, if his game is as good as he says it is, I guess I _could_ shortlist him.”

Ned snorted as Peter saved the message to the bidders’ list and closed out the rest of the tabs in the browser.

\---

It was never a question of winning the auction. Tony could’ve declared bankruptcy, surrendered all of his assets, sold off every last one of his company shares, and still have more than enough to outbid any of the bottom feeders who were drooling over Peter Parker’s virginity. Another alternative had never even been worth considering.

What was a question— _the_ question, it seemed—was what Tony was going to do now that he’d won.

The obvious (and that should’ve been _only_ ) answer was to unmask the ruse entirely, probably sandwiching it between back-to-back lectures on 1) the insane dangers of soliciting creeps—very much up to and including himself—online, and 2) whatever it was that’d prompted Peter to put up that listing in the first place. Desperation, curiosity, the needle-stab of risk-taking adrenaline—Tony was pretty sure that there was nothing the kid could come up with that’d surprise him. He’d lived a life, as they say, and most of that life had been extensively documented by everyone from his family’s biographers to the grocery checkout line tabloids. There wasn’t anything his young (intern? protégé? friend?) colleague could tell him that was gonna make Tony think any less of him.

So they’d hash it out just as soon as the funds transfer cleared; Tony was a mystery bidder of his word, after all. It’d be awkward and uncomfortable and—once the shock wore off—the kid would probably make a stink about Tony disabling _all_ his trackers now, which he’d be willing to compromise on. It’d be appropriate and mentorly and above board because…because what else could it be? Nothing that Tony could want; and even if he did, in the phantom singe of his shrapnel scars, nothing that Peter Parker deserved. Nothing that—even if it didn’t make him sleep better at night—would  make Tony sleep worse.

That was the plan—no ifs, ands, or buts—until a message pinged up the morning after the auction closed from SweetBoy17:

_I’m glad it was you ;)_

So Tony paused, reconsidered—he had 2-3 business days before the transfer was approved, and where was the harm in a little safe-for-work roleplaying anyway?

_The rest of them didn’t stand a chance tbh_

The response came quick; in retrospect, Tony should’ve swallowed his coffee before opening it.

_your bid was…really generous. way higher than the others. maybe i can throw in something extra to make it worth the cost?_

Tony sputtered around his free trade dark roast; the kid was ballsy, he’d give him that. And he was _here_ —in the lab for another tech session with Tony—illicitly texting, which would definitely have been a breach of his internship rules, if he’d had an actual legitimate internship with rules to break. But still, what would Peter’s hypothetical office manager say about this?

He made his way down to the R&D floors of the tower, purposefully leaving the message read but not replied to. When he rounded the corner—full of floor-to-ceiling shatterproof glass walls and millions of dollars’ worth of should-be-classified projects put on hold because there wasn’t anyone left in Tony’s life who was both capable and trustworthy enough to finish them—Parker had his back to him, hunched over an open access panel and tinkering with the wires slithering out of it. Tony watched him: a gangly bundle of fascination and concentration, not just smart but clever and eager and always jumping just a split-second before he’d finished running the necessary calculations. Always swearing that he’d thought it all through so that people (up to and including Tony, no doubt) would take him seriously. Always so sure that things would work out—or maybe he was just really good at faking it.

And fuck, who did _that_ remind Tony of?

But this was altruistic, or at least as altruistic as Tony got—there were no ulterior motives, no hidden agendas, no fine print. This thing he had with Peter, it was paternalistic; it was trying to do better by someone else than his father figures had done by him.

And the rest of it? Didn’t mean _anything_.

(File that under: Absolutely Not Denial.)

Behind the still-shut lab doors, Tony texted back: _No extras needed…you’re worth every penny_.

Pete straightened up and reached into his pocket, must’ve had his phone on vibrate. When he swiped the screen on, his face lit up like the night skyline and Tony was sucker-punched by two very alarming revelations.

First: Peter didn’t know that the winning bidder was him. _Of course_ he didn’t know, Tony logically understood that, but for some reason it hadn’t fully registered with him until this exact moment that—as far as Pete knew—it was a completely different and distinctly Not Tony Stark person he was communicating…no, _flirting_ …with now.

Second: Tony didn’t like that. Not at all, not even a subatomic bit.

Peter typed something out, fast and a little giddy, and Tony’s pocket buzzed. He ignored it, scanned his way into the lab instead and felt a twinge of satisfaction when the kid jumped at his entrance.

“I hope you’re not spending your valuable internship time sexting, Mr. Parker,” Tony drawled out, glib and just a little spiny. “Or whatever it is you kids do nowadays. Emoji orgies maybe?”

“You caught me, Mr. Stark.” Peter grinned cheeky, and Tony saw it hide a soft blush. “I mean, who _wouldn’t_ want to have an emoji orgy with me?”

Tony ruffled his hair, made sure not to let his hand linger. “Don’t sell yourself short, kid. I’m sure you’ve got your fair share of eggplant enthusiasts—it’s the eggplant, right? I’d bet good money that the developers knew _exactly_ what they were doing there. Anyway, when I was your age it was all party lines and pick-up artist classes, so what do I know?”

“And cocaine,” Peter nodded seriously.

“Yes, we can’t forget that.” Tony winked, itched to reach for the kid again but settled instead for rummaging through the tool box on the work table a little more aggressively than was strictly necessary. “For the record, I don’t recommend any of those.”

Peter handed him a pair of needle nose pliers that were, somehow, exactly what he was looking for. “Duly noted.”

Looking back, Tony should’ve known that it could only be downhill from there.

\---

**Mark50Daddy**

_chat sent 10:09 p.m._

_How’s my favorite virgin doing tonight?_

 

**SweetBoy17**

_chat sent 10:14 p.m._

_better now that you’re here ;)))_

 

**Mark50Daddy**

_chat sent 10:33 p.m._

_Did you think about it anymore?_

 

**SweetBoy17**

_chat sent 10:42 p.m._

_it’s ALL i’ve been thinking about_

 

**Mark50Daddy**

_chat sent 11:05 p.m._

_So, what’s the verdict? What do you want for your first time?_

 

**SweetBoy17**

_chat sent 11:06 p.m._

_everything <3 _

 

 

**Spiderling**

_718-xxx-xxxx 9:51 p.m._

_would it be okay for me to stop by the tower tomorrow? I know we don’t have a meeting but I wanted to run a few more stunner tests if that’s okay with you…btw sorry to bother you so late, Mr. Stark_

 

**Definitely Not Tony Stark**

_212-xxx-xxxx 10:13 p.m._

_Never a bother, kid. My labs are your labs, as long as you don’t pirate the tech and sell it to the Chinese._

 

**Spiderling**

_718-xxx-xxxx 10:57 p.m._

_hahahaha I’ll try not to Mr. Stark!! and thanks!!!_

 

**Definitely Not Tony Stark**

_212-xxx-xxxx 11:02 p.m._

_Shouldn’t you be sleeping? I don’t want to get blamed for you failing your Chemistry test tomorrow._

 

**Spiderling**

_718-xxx-xxxx 11:06 p.m._

_aww you’re no fun…goodnight Mr. Stark!_

 

**Definitely Not Tony Stark**

_212-xxx-xxxx 11:07 p.m._

_Well, one of us has to be the adult. Night, kid._

\---

Peter found the tracker, woven into a line of code embedded in his social media logins, a few days before the auction went live. Technically, Ned had been the one who’d found it while he was doing sweeps on the finalists, making sure that there wasn’t anything skeevy in their digital trails. He’d found a weird glitch in the profile of Peter’s favorite candidate; at first, they thought it was some program cloning their IP address back at them because it was showing its origination as the Stark Industries network, which couldn’t be right. So they’d dug a little deeper and stumbled across the tracking code, which Peter’d been pissed about until he realized that this kind of thing—a shady internet auction for his virginity—was probably just proving all of Mr. Stark’s paranoia about his online activities right.

And then, of course, it hit him: the tracking code meant that Mr. Stark knew about the auction. Knew and hadn’t said anything, hadn’t tried to intervene or bench him or get the site shut down. Maybe he wasn’t watching all that closely after all, or maybe he just didn’t care about this kind of stuff. Or maybe...

Ned checked those glitchy IPs again but the results were the same. Peter began to wonder, fantasize, even though he knew that—whatever was going on—it absolutely wasn’t Mr. Stark actually bidding on a sex auction for him. This was probably some lesson he was trying to teach Peter, like an epically fucked-up afterschool special, and that meant he was gonna have to come clean about the money and how he was failing at taking care of the person he owed the most to and that was gonna _suck_. But there was still a part of him that was so _relieved_ that Mr. Stark was in on the whole thing now. That Peter knew what he was getting—and getting what he wanted, even if he wasn’t going to get _everything_ he wanted. A stern talking-to by Mr. Stark was still a better prospect than a first time with any of the other finalists, in every possible scenario.

But then the bids came in, and Mr. Stark’s (because it _had to be_ Mr. Stark; Peter couldn’t deal with this tracking detail being something he’d foisted off on Happy) was several zeroes bigger than second place. His bid was a number that Peter didn’t have a concept of in real life, and it definitely wasn’t a number that Peter could accept, regardless of the circumstances. As the auction clock ran down, he decided that he’d try to get Mr. Stark to void the transfer before they even got to the lectures—really push the insinuations about what exactly this bidder was hoping to get for all that extra cash—because he knew that it’d be a lot harder to get his (supervisor? co-worker? friend?) mentor to take the money back once they were face-to-face.

Mr. Stark was proud—of his resources and his ability to be generous with them—and Peter didn’t want him to take this the wrong way. He didn’t want Mr. Stark to think that he was using him, for his money or his connections or any of the other stuff Peter knew more than a few people had exploited that generosity for in the past. Peter had his own pride, sure, but that wasn’t what had stopped him from going to his mentor instead of the online auction boards. Mr. Stark had enough to worry about; he didn’t need another one of Peter’s dumb problems added onto that stress pile.

Because Peter’d been just that—a kid-shaped mess of stress and worry and disappointment—for most of their relationship, but he knew he could be more. _Wanted_ to be more for Mr. Stark. He wanted to be someone the man could rely on, someone he could trust with his weaknesses _and_ his strengths. He wanted to be an equal—maybe not in experience, but at least in capabilities. He wanted to pull his weight, to take some of that burden away from a man who shouldered way too much for way too long. It wasn’t Peter’s place to say that right now…but maybe someday, once he’d proven himself worthy of sharing some of that world-crisis-weight too.

And that started with not taking unearned payouts; after all, it wasn’t like Mr. Stark was his rich father, there to give him an allowance just for existing. Peter’d already had a dad, and a fatherly uncle, and he didn’t want someone else—not even Mr. Stark—trying to fill those impossible shoes. He was all father-ed out.

So that was that, he didn’t want Mr. Stark to be his dad.

(But maybe his…)

Well, that didn’t matter either and definitely wasn’t going to help prove that he wasn’t just some starry-eyed little kid anymore, so Peter’d shoved it back too. Focused on being the best junior Avenger and fake intern he could be, and gulped the rest of his fluttery feelings for his mentor down. Hoped that they’d wear themselves out churning around in his stomach so he wouldn’t embarrass himself, at least not when he was in the same room as Mr. Stark. And it’d worked—more or less—up until his plan to stop the deposit somehow unraveled into an increasingly explicit chat session that was _very ineffective_ at convincing him not to try getting Mr. Stark to go through with the terms of his winning bid.

By the third day every buzz from his phone got him at least half-hard—at this point, it was Pavlovian—and the absolute worst part about it was that most of those messages came when Mr. Stark was _right there_. Peter would fight the urge to check his phone as soon as it went off, didn’t want to let on how much he knew just yet. Besides it was worse after he replied, because then he had to endure The Wait. Sometimes Mr. Stark typed out a message, cool and casual, and sent it back right away; other times he didn’t touch his phone for another hour and Peter could feel it burning a hole through those so-tight jeans. It was a game, Peter decided, or maybe a test. Either way, he wouldn’t— _couldn’t_ —lose.

There was something else too, something that felt a lot less calculated and a lot more volatile, radiating off of his mentor. Something snippy, like frustration or firecracker anger—but why would Mr. Stark be angry? Other than the obvious (that was: the whole virginity auction thing), but then why keep playing with him like this? Why not just call Peter’s bluff and get on with it? Whatever else he was, Mr. Stark wasn’t passive-aggressive—not about stuff like this, anyway.

Peter let that roll around in his brain, gaining momentum as it circled near the base of his skull, as he sat at the marble-countered kitchen island and scribbled out his calculus homework. Mr. Stark was pacing across the open lounge area, flipping through a stack of paper reports and one-handedly juggling a pen and his phone. A second later, a message notification buzzed at Peter and he fished his phone out of his jacket pocket.

_Are you being a good boy today?_

He glanced up at Mr. Stark—he was squinting at a paragraph and marking it up in red ink—then back at the words on his screen. He hesitated, fingers hovering over the screen keys, and got five letters out before being gruffly interrupted.

“I thought you had homework to do.” Mr. Stark planted his hands on his hips, crumpling the reports in his grip. His eyebrows curved low and threatening. “Flirt on your own time, Parker.”

That was it—the last of the last straws—and Peter almost snapped back: _it_ is _my time_ , you _invited me to stay_ , _and besides it’s_ you _who I’m flirting with so what’s your problem, Mark50Daddy?_ But he caught himself, just in time, biting the end of his tongue until his teeth sliced in as he watched Mr. Stark chew at the crooked line of his frown.

He looked angry, but also…anxious? Nervous? Flustered? Peter tried to step back and consider the whole scene: the strangely intimate chats pinging back and forth under the heavy, strained silence that’d started to stuff itself in around them. Talking without talking—not talking like they had started to, after all the different not-talking before. Or talking to each other through masks that were supposed to make them someone else and they should’ve both been experts at that but maybe…

“How’d you know I was flirting, Mr. Stark?” Peter set his phone down, screen to the countertop.

Mr. Stark fumbled, cleared his throat for a sloppy cover. “You aren’t exactly a cypher, kid.”

“Mm,” Peter hummed, twirled his pencil between his fingers. “Neither are you.”

“What was that?” Mr. Stark shifted, tucked his arms across his chest and took two careful steps in.

Peter tapped the eraser against the marble—listened to it beat out steady like a heart, like the whirl of a revving engine—and made the leap. “You don’t have to be jealous, Mr. Stark. I meant it when I said I was glad it was you.”

Mr. Stark froze, stiff like he’d been locked in one of his old Iron suits, then started blinking rapid and darting. Peter’s stomach dropped out; he hadn’t thought that maybe springing something like this on his mentor might be triggering. Not that Mr. Stark shared much about that part of his life with Peter, but the signs were there. The same ones May had sometimes, when she went back to the day Ben died. The ones he had too, more frequent and vivid after he’d learned what it felt like to have a building collapse on him. The symptoms were easy to spot once you knew what to look for.

So Peter reached for him—didn’t know what else to do—but Mr. Stark flinched back, shook it out like he was rebooting.

“I’m gonna need you to be more specific,” Tony dropped his gaze to the kitchen backsplash, pointedly avoiding eye contact. “I’ve done a lot you could be glad about, though I can’t think of anything I’m particularly jealous about. Unless you’ve been moonlighting with Google or, god forbid, _Microsoft_.”

It was an out and Mr. Stark was telling him to take it, like Peter’s calling card wasn’t running into danger and letting the doors lock behind him.

“It wasn’t as stupid an idea as you think, I promise.” Peter slid off the stool as gracefully as he could, which was basically just not tripping and falling onto the Spanish tile floor. “And it wasn’t a scam. I just—I wanted to try and make some extra money for May and my college fund and you know friendly neighborhood crimefighting and fake internships don’t leave a lot of time for real afterschool jobs and I thought…”

He trailed off, shoved his fists into his pants pockets so he wouldn’t start fidgeting. “I just wanted to start carrying my weight, you know? I didn’t expect—I’m not gonna take your money, Mr. Stark. It’s too much, especially since you’re not. I mean, I’m _assuming_ that you’re not—”

“Going to fuck you?” Mr. Stark finally looked up; his eyes had gone wide and a little frantic, like a trapped animal. “No, kid, you can sleep easy knowing that I’m not looming in the background waiting to deflower you.”

Peter leaned in, suddenly a little shaky on his feet. “Is that how you imagined it?”

“What?! Jesus, _no_ , Pete.” Mr. Stark sounded furious and gutted, like someone had dragged twin forks down his throat. “That’s not—I didn’t—I _didn’t_ imagine it. I had more important things on my mind—like making sure that my superpowered trainee didn’t get himself murdered on some extreme Tindr hook-up-gone-horribly-wrong.”

He took a few heavy, shuddering breaths and dropped the reports onto the island; they skittered across it. “Look kid, believe it or not, I get it. I get wanting to take responsibility and provide for the folks who’ve always been there for you. I get needing people to see you as something more than you see yourself, and I get doing really fucking dumb things to try and get there. Hell, I even get doing stuff for the thrill of it—or the pleasure. You can cross-check that with every gossip column from 1992 to 2008. And I get not wanting to throw that on other people’s baggage piles, but remember what I said about wanting you to be better? Yeah, this is one of those situations and I know I don’t practice what I preach but it’s hard to do this alone. No, scratch that—it’s impossible. That’s the whole thing here—you, me, us, the Avengers—it was supposed to be about being a team.”

“And teammates put tracking codes in each other’s social media accounts?” Peter pushed, voice just a little bitter through the middle.

“Touché,” Mr. Stark conceded. “In my defense, most teammates don’t go around trying to auction off their own personal Paradise by the Dashboard Light. Also, S.H.I.E.L.D. was all over our asses before we found out they were a bunch of Nazis so I’m sure they knew all my dirty little secrets too. And most teammates aren’t young enough to be your late-in-life kid, so there’s that too.”

“You’re not my dad, Mr. Stark.” Peter bit off each word, staring him down to be sure his mentor got the point.

Tony rubbed at his temples and sighed. “I know, kid, and I’m not trying to be. But teammates do protect each other, have each other’s backs, and I—I’ve got a lot of that impulse for you. Maybe too much, who knows? This should probably be a wake-up call for me but…what do you think, Pete?”

Well, what did Peter think? That Tony had two modes—overprotective or disengaged—and neither of them really worked. Not in the healthy, professional, appropriate way they kept trying to convince themselves they could be. That—if Peter said so—Tony would walk away from this whole mentor/mentee thing, set up another senior Avenger to train him and blame himself for screwing it all up. That—if Peter asked—Tony would try to be a dad for him, even if he was sure that he’d fail. That they’d never be an equal team, not really, not with this mudslide of emotional sludge between them that’d been clogging the pipes since long before Peter walked into his apartment and found Tony Stark having tea with his aunt on the sofa.

That they had to flush it out, clear the lines, before they could really know one way or the other.

Peter swallowed against a gummy, stale throat and hovered half a half inch from Mr. Stark—from Tony. “I think that I wanted it to be you, before I knew it _was_ you. I wanted the bid to be real, and I wanted you to want it to be real. So maybe we’re both too much for each other, Mr. Stark—and I think…I think I want that too.”


End file.
